LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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"LIFE" SERIES. 

Uniform in size, style and binding. 



NOW READY: 

"As Natural as Life.'' 1 

Studies of the Inner Kingdom. By Charles G-. 
Ames, Minister of the Church of the Disciples, 
Boston. Cloth, bevelled, red edges, 109 pages, 
50 cents. 

In Love with Love. 

Four Life-Studies. By James H. West, Author 
of "Uplifts of Heart and Will," etc. Cloth, 
"bevelled, red edges, 109 pages, 50 cents. 



[Others, by different writers, in preparation.] 



* # * For sale "by booksellers, or sent postpaid on 
receipt of price by 

JAMES H. WEST, Publisher, 

174 High Street, Boston. 



g* 



V 



"As Natural as Life" 



STUDIES OF 
THE INNER KINGDOM 

by y 

CHAELES G^ AMES, 

MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES, BOSTON. 



'Let the great forces, wise of old, 
Have their full xoay with thee." 

—Edward Rowland Sill. 



BOSTON 

James H. West, 174 High Street 

1894 




p^ 1 

* w- 



Copyright, 1894, 
By JAMES H. WEST. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

"As Natural as Life," 9 

Self-Preservation, 39 

Heart-Ache and Heart' s-Ease, 67 

Numbering Our Days, 91 



KEY-NOTES. 

The ideas contained in the four papers here 
printed gather around the central conception 
oi the Good Life — the life which is most truly 
divine when most richly human. 

1. The Good Life, in striving toward conformity with 

nature as the expression of the Perfect Mind, 
seeks to correct whatever is amiss. 

2. The Good Life is the Life of Sonship, which hum- 

bly accepts its own aspirations as inspirations of 
the indwelling Father. 

3. The Good Life is made perfect, not by suffering, 

but through suffering, which is but an incident 
in the large process of evolution. 

4. The Good Life "does not suffer itself to be 

interrupted." It unfolds in time, but it belongs 
to eternity. 



AS NATURAL AS LIFE." 



Come forth into the light of things ! 
Let Nature be your teacher. . . . 
Sweet is the lore that Nature brings ! 

Our meddling intellect 
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things 

We murder to dissect. 

— Wordsworth. 

A man's best things are nearest him, 

Lie close about his feet. — Milnes. 

Socrates said, " Those who want fairest things are 
nearest to the gods." — Diogenes Laertius. 

Things that are have kinship with things that are 
from the beginning. Further, this Nature is styled 
Truth, and it is the First Cause of all that is true. 

— Marcus Aurelius. 

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; 
the world and they that dwell therein. 

I muse on Thy works; I meditate on the works 
of Thy hands. — Hebrew Psalms. 

And when he came to himself, he said, ... I will 
arise and go to my father. 

— Story of the Prodigal. 
(8) 



AS NATURAL AS LIFE." 



" All riches, goods and braveries never told, 
Of earth, sun, air and heaven — now I hold 
Your being in my being ; I am ye, 
And ye myself; yea, lastly, Thee, 
God, whom my roads all reach, howe'er they run, 
My Father, Friend, Beloved, dear All-One ! 

The great bird Purpose bears me on her wings, 
And I am one with all the kinsmen things 
That e'er my Father fathered." 

— Sidney Lanier. 

An elderly lady, whose life has been richly 
filled with beneficence, and whose spirit seems 
to be in joyons touch with everything true 
and beautiful and good, tells me that in her 
childhood she stood by her mother's knee and 
recited lessons from a catechism written by 
Dr. Channing. One question ran like this : 
" When I w r alk abroad, what do I see ? " The 



10 "as natural as life." 

answer was: "I see the blue sky, the bright 
sun, the grass waving in the breeze, the 
beautiful flowers and the singing birds." 
Then came the question, "Who made all 
these lovely and wonderful things?" The 
object was to direct the mind " through nature 
up to nature's God." Thus all common things 
were associated with thoughts of the great 
and good and wise Author. The child was 
made aware of the spiritual order by means 
of the pleasant impressions made on the 
senses, just as the same child must have 
learned what love is through feeling the clasp 
of warm arms and seeing the smile of a kind 
face. And my friend remembers, at seventy, 
that as she stood by her mother, on a spring 
day, reciting this delightful lesson, " the 
roses were blooming under the window, the 
dandelions looked up from the grass, the 
purple martins warbled among the trees, and 
the catechism itself seemed to be a part of 
all the loveliness of the world." So her 



11 

religious feelings opened like the flowers, 
and glad reverence for the Eternal was 
as spontaneous as affection for her mother. 
Faith, hope and love were not forced or 
artificial sentiments ; they sung themselves 
into her young life just as the birds sung 
among the trees. It all seemed as natural as 
life. The receptive heart of the child was 
penetrated by a feeling far beyond anything 
in the catechism — a power too deep for 
words, too deep for thought; the feeling and 
the power which Wordsworth tries to body 
forth as a Presence — 

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 

, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

It pleased me to learn that Samuel Long- 
fellow was taught in his childhood from the 
same little book; and I remembered what 
Charming himself once said about his boy- 



12 

hood's walk on the shore of Narragansett Bay, 
where, "in reverential sympathy with the power 
around him, he became conscious of the power 
within." Why not? Is it not all one power? 
And there was something in the tone of the 
story which brought to mind the Galilean 
teacher who taught men to know the heavenly 
Father by considering the lilies of the field 
and the fowls of the air. Perhaps Christianity 
has its strongest hold upon us in this very 
thing, that it does not draw any sharp dividing 
line between natural and supernatural, or 
physical and spiritual, but brings together 
heaven and earth, God and man, so that our 
common experiences shade off imperceptibly 
into the infinite mysteries, and the things seen 
and temporal blend with things unseen and 
eternal. And thus religion is as natural as 
life. What room is there for a non-natural 
r3ligion ? 

But as Lessing said in Germany, a hundred 
years ago, "This is not an enlightened age; 



"as natural as life." 13 

it is an age becoming enlightened." We have 
yet to clear our minds of a deal of fog; we 
have yet to open our eyes to the riches 
and glory of our inheritance, and to the 
immeasurable privilege of existence. 

There ought to be, and therefore there must 
be, a way of taking our place and our part in 
this universe which would put us in harmony 
with all its facts and forces and laws, — in 
harmony with each other and with the whole 
order of things. Then we should realize the 
perfect will of the Creator and our own 
highest happiness. 

How shall we come at this better way? 
Does it need any change in the order of 
the world? Or must there be a change in 
ourselves ? Here is the answer of Paul : In 
order to realize the perfect will of God, "be 
ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." 
We must have an inward invigoration, a mental 
and moral unfolding, the development in our- 
selves of a deeper life, with higher principles 



14 "AS natural as life." 

and larger powers; — we must let the divine 
powers have their way with us ; — in short, we 
must grow. We must advance in clearness 
and largeness of intelligence, in purity and 
nobleness of feeling, in steadiness and power 
of will: our proper nature must unfold into 
the image of God. 

But, one thing is better known in our time 
than it could be in the time of Paul: This 
growth of mind and heart and will is greatly 
helped by our coming into active and orderly 
relations with nature and with humanity. 
The forces of spiritual vitality are circulating 
forces ; they are transmissible forces ; they 
come to us through the .media of heredity and 
environment. Our heredity includes all the 
past history of the race and its accumulated 
gains ; our environment includes all our 
relationships with the world of nature and 
of man. God gives himself to us, not only 
by the direct influence of His spirit, but 
through the thousand channels opened by 



"as natural as life." 15 

knowledge, affection and action. The trans- 
forming of onr being and the renewing of our 
minds goes on by the help of the outward 
world, even by the inhalation of oxygen ; and 
we vibrate to the touch of human sympathies 
and to the throbbing of souls and stars. The 
more fully and vitally we are related to the 
rest of creation, — to nature and to humanity, — 
the more rich and complete will be our life. 
And we must turn our attention this way. 

Eeligion is defined as the tie or bond which 
holds man to his Maker; but if he is held to 
his Maker through all these appointed relations, 
then religion includes every tie which binds 
him to the worlds of matter and of mind. 
What we call the physical is therefore a part 
or expression of the spiritual order, and the 
whole system of things, seen and unseen, is a 
unity and a harmony of which each one of us 
is meant to be an honorable part. Eeligion 
is therefore a feeling of this unity, a sense 
of this harmony, a glad acceptance of our 



16 

place and our part in the whole. And sin is 
separation j a breach of the unities. The 
branch withers, if divided from the vine; no 
organ is sound, unless it shares the life of 
the body; no body is sound, unless it shares 
the life of nature; and nature, I think, is in 
good running order only because it is full of 
that wisdom, power, and goodness which we 
call God. 

Consider for a moment the meaning of the 
word " nature." It comes from natus, "to be 
born"; and when we apply the word to the 
whole system of created things, we imply 
that this system is the outbirth of a supreme 
parentage ; that the world itself has been 
produced by some adequate Power. In the 
large sense, nature is a term which covers 
everything in the universe except the producing 
Cause. In this sense man is a part of nature ; 
though in common speech we confine the term 
to the physical world around us. 

Let us go back for a moment to the little 



17 

girl in the rural home, with her mother and 
the catechism, with the flowers and the birds. 
The book alone would not have done much 
for her, nor is it likely that the beauty of the 
world would have made such a deep and 
tender appeal, if there had been no atmosphere 
of human love. Nor would the human love 
alone give the great interpretation. All these 
factors wrought together, under the prompting 
of the unseen Spirit, to open the mind and 
heart of the child with transforming and 
renewing power. And is there any day of 
any life from which any one of these gracious 
helps is wholly absent ? We may be dull, 
inert, unresponsive, torpid ; but the sky bends 
above, human companionship is around, the 
word of truth is spoken in our ears or stored 
in our memory, and ever there is a still, small 
voice whispering of things unseen, and bidding 
us "be transformed by the renewing of our 
minds. " Our noblest moods and deepest 
experiences, of joy or sorrow, seem to draw 



18 

us, as "with living cords, into universal sym- 
pathies and fellowships. How can we ever 
be alone and unrelated? The lesson of 
Channing's catechism comes simply to this : 
Accept the world as a whole; accept it as 
God's world and yours; and then you will 
be free to let your own life expand and 
enrich itself by taking possession of the 
particulars as fast as you are able. 

This simple openness of mind and heart — 
this trusting, responsive, receptive attitude of 
the unspoiled child — holds in itself the secret 
of scholarship, the highest philosophy, and the 
wisdom of the angels. There is no other door 
into the kingdom, no other way into the 
spiritual order. It is the ground principle of 
honesty, or moral and intellectual rectitude, to 
let every fact of the world impress us at its 
full value ; as it is also the part of self-respect 
and self-justice to meet all realities as if we 
ourselves were as real as any of them. At 
the heart's core of it all is a deep instinctive 



"as natural as life." 19 

faith in the universal order and the Power 
which is above all, through all, and in all. 
To submit our whole being to that Power in 
fearless, childlike confidence, at every stage of 
our history, is to be continuously transformed 
and renewed, re-created and born again. 

One lesson we are ever learning — the lesson 
of unity in variety and variety in unity. 
Think how many features come together to 
make a face or a landscape, and what an 
assortment of objects we look upon whenever 
we open our eyes ! The rocks are not like 
the streams ; the forests are not like the 
fields ; the hills are not like the plains ; the 
birds are not like the flowers ; the sky is not 
like the sea; the stars are not like the 
clouds ; the night is not like the day. 

Yet they all harmonize ; they make up well 
into a composite whole ; they belong to a large 
system; we could not spare one line or tint, 
one light or shadow. Every aspect of nature 
affects us in a way of its own ; yet all aspects 



20 

unite in a common impression, like the unlike 
words that make a sentence, or the consonant 
and vowel sounds that make a word. This 
silent and sublime sympathy of creation is 
performed by a vast orchestra ; each instrument 
supports every other ; each separate note 
contributes to the completeness, and is both 
lost and found in the universal harmony. 
One breath sweeps through every pipe; one 
hand touches every key and string. And we 
are present at the mighty concert, and are a 
part of it. 

Every object on which the sun shines tells 
of the sun ; every creature that lives by help 
of its light and warmth, reveals the power of 
the sun. The sun helps us to understand the 
fixed stars, because they too are suns. Then 
all the heavenly bodies, taken together, impress 
us with the extent, grandeur and unity of 
creation. So we rise to a conception of what 
the Greeks called the Kosmos — the beautiful 
ordered universe. We cannot stop there, The 



"as natural as life." 21 

constellations are not more real than we are ; 
and in ourselves we find facts of a higher 
order than all those shining globes. We find 
reason, affection and free self-directing power, 
with this commanding sense of right and 
wrong. So we learn that the material order 
is merely the theatre of that higher kind of 
order to which we belong, and which we call 
the moral or spiritual order. The whole 
system of things includes both, — includes 
matter and mind, with all their laws, powers 
and possibilities. And our own existence as 
intelligent beings is the one fact which we 
can never doubt. Consciousness is the eye with 
which the mind sees itself; and this faculty 
of self-recognition gives us a key to the 
knowledge of that universal Spirit which 
"hides in pure transparency," and which Jesus 
has taught us to call our Father. 

There are these two ways of taking nature — 
the poetic and the scientific. We muse and 
we meditate. The poet sees the rose as a 



22 "as natural as life." 

whole — sees it as a picture. He drinks in 
its form and color just as he inhales its 
fragrance; it affects him as if it were the 
living spirit of beauty — a fair sister of his 
own. The man of science must have a name 
for it; he must pick it to pieces, study the 
arrangement of its parts, and compare them 
with the structure of other flowers. But the 
moment he begins to admire and wonder and 
enjoy, he becomes a poet; and he may 'be all 
the more a poet because of his knowledge. 
So in the larger way; the poet feels the 
world which the scientific man only sees and 
studies. He takes possession of the world 
through his intellect, while the poet lets the 
world take possession of him through insight, 
imagination and affection. Each sees aspects 
of nature to which the other is partly blind. 
One hunts for facts to be analyzed and 
classified; the other reads the expression of 
the same facts, and sets them to music. 
These two men enter the temple at different 



"as natural as life.' 7 23 

doors. The scientist is more observant of the 
architecture 5 the poet faces the altar. 

But by either method, nature becomes a 
school. The plain, dry facts are rich in 
meaning; and meaning, or the soul of reality, 
is what the mind of man forever seeks. The 
more clearly we think, and the more truly we 
feel, the more full of significance we find our 
facts ; for the more apparent becomes the 
order of the world. Our reason is never 
satisfied with confusion and chaos; we are 
looking everywhere for harmony and perfection. 
If we do not see it everywhere, we may fairly 
suspect ourselves of something like color- 
blindness. Nature is a great and a deep book ; 
but we are poor readers. 

We are indebted to science for showing us 
the laws of the world; to poetry for showing 
us that these laws are alive, — that they are 
the expression of mind and the movement of 
love. Science helps us faintly to apprehend 
how vast and how old and how rich the 



24 "as natural as life." 

universe must be; poetry helps us to live in 
it as children at home, with a joyful sense of 
relationship to all that is, or was, or is to be. 
But outsight is necessary to insight. 

The germs of both science and poetry are 
in every mind. Eor we all love knowledge, 
and we also build castles. The child that cares 
for flowers and stars is already a botanist and 
an astronomer; already a poet looks out of 
the young eyes that gaze with pleased wonder 
on the flight of a bird, an apple-tree in bloom, 
or a running stream. The method of the 
kindergarten is only one way of following out 
the hint which nature everywhere gives of the 
divine plan of educating the mind and soul of 
man. We have hardly begun to realize the 
religious value of our five senses. 

When we have no sense of the sacramental 
quality of the works of God, we may safely 
suspect that in ourselves there is some 
disorder, defect, or immaturity. Then we are 
like blind men, moving all unaware through 



"as natural as life." 25 

the Museum of Art; or like the deaf, sitting 
in the Music Hall while the orchestra performs 
a symphony. What a rebuke to our frivolity, 
our sordidness, our philanthropies, and even 
to our religion, that we find ourselves 
insensitive to the beauties and glories and 
harmonies amid which we live and move and 
have our being ! Often we disqualify our- 
selves for enjoying nature by giving way to 
sadness, and might join in the confession of 
William Watson: 

" Fast bound I sat, the thrall of inward gloom; 
Heard the great tidal rhythm of Life and Law 
Unheeding; and without emotion saw 
The flower-like world's immortal tint and bloom." 

Are we really so low down ? Can we give 
no better reason for our stupidity than the 
oxen might give ? Or have we taken up in 
some form the sensual philosophy of the man 
who said that he had found nothing on earth 
that satisfied him so well as tobacco ? Or are 
we like the company described by Thackeray, 



26 

who drew the parlor curtains to shut out the 
sunset, that they might light the lamps for 
a game of cards ? 

It would be a pity to pass through the 
world like passengers in a sleeping-car, and 
perhaps find out, too late, that we have missed 
what we came here for. Here let me tell the 
story of the aged French priest, with whom 
an American gentleman picked up an acquaint- 
ance on the Pacific Eailroad. The priest told 
him that he had started for a journey round 
the world ; and that he was put up to it by a 
dream. He dreamed that he died and met 
the good God. The good God asked him how 
he liked the world he had come from. He 
was obliged to answer that he didn't look at 
it; that he had spent his time in performing 
the offices of the church, in repeating prayers, 
and in getting ready to die. When he awoke 
from the dream, he resolved, old as he was, 
that if the good God would let him stay here 
a little longer, he would take a square look 



"as natural as life." 27 

at this world before he was summoned for 
another such examination. He had furnished 
himself with some little books of physical 
, geography, geology, mineralogy and botany, 
and was reading and looking, reading and 
looking, and so preparing for death by a new 
method. 

I doubt if any of us have fairly considered 
the spiritual value of natural knowledge. 
There is a strong hint of it in the parables 
of Jesus ; and the germ of it may be found 
in some noble passages of the Hebrew Psalms, 
where the writers forgot to complain of their 
enemies, their bodily ailments and their moods 
of morbidness and dolefulness. We can never 
be too grateful for such Psalms as the 104th, 
107th and 148th, as lofty inspirations of 
reverence for the Power that makes for 
beauty as well as for righteousness. 

And why may we not give thanks to the 
same spirit of illumination for the modern 
minstrels and sages who have taught us the 



28 "as natural as life." 

loveliness of the world we live in, as well as 
for the devoted students who have shown us 
the methods and stages of development by 
which the earth with the fulness thereof has 
been brought forward during the uncounted 
ages since it was a vast cloud of fire-mist? 

Nature is clean and wholesome. Purity of 
thought and feeling is helped by such mental 
companionship,— by the society of rocks, trees, 
hills, streams, clouds, and the comings and 
goings of days and seasons. We can generally 
trust a man who really loves to be alone in 
the grove, or beside the sea, or under the 
stars; and the boy who is on the hunt for 
natural collections, or watching the habits of 
birds, and trying to name them without a gun. 
And if in every city there could be cheap, 
bright, taking popular lectures on all the 
natural sciences, with colored or stereopticon 
pictures, and if the young folk and the 
hard-worked men and women could have a 
Saturday half-holiday for illustrative excursions 



29 

to the country, I believe it would be a good 

way to counteract the saloon. 

How shall we know man? Study nature. 

How know nature ? Study man. How know 

God? Study both nature and man. There is 

no clear and sharp boundary between nature, 

man and God. We think a boundary, but we 

cannot fix nor find any. All the realities are 

interconnected; each leads to all, and all to 

each. 

u A subtle chain of countless rings, 
The nearest to the farthest brings." 

Everything we learn of nature outside of man 
seems like a parable, intended to illustrate 
and interpret man to himself. As in nature 
every individual object or aspect comes in for 
a share in the greatness of all, and all facts 
are related as parts of the larger whole, so it 
must be with our individual human lives: 
each has a sanctity of its own, yet each is 
bound up and blended with all the rest. The 
democracy of humanity is the kingdom of God ; 



30 "AS natural as life." 

but the King forever insists that it shall be 
a democracy, for it is His good pleasure to 
give the kingdom and the sovereignty to the 
least of these His children, that we may all 
reign together while we serve each other, and 
all serve while we reign. 

What ! shall we see the sun in every ray, 
and the earth in every grain of sand, and yet 
not see the divine light in every mind, and 
the divine love in every life, however obscured ? 
The great world-forces — gravity, chemistry, 
electricity — are as busy in the grime and 
foulness as they are in the crystal and the 
whiteness of the lily; and why do we doubt 
that the spiritual forces are as busy in 
lives depressed by misfortune, or darkened by 
ignorance, or besotted by sin, as in the 
enlightenment of sages or the inspiration of 
saints? For the unity is unbroken; upward 
or downward, the scale is continuous. The 
one life is in the lowest forms as well as the 
highest; the one love fills the hells as well 



31 

as the heavens. There is indeed a nobler 
kind of music; 

" But in the mud and scum of things, 
There always, always something sings." 

We do not see the whole of anything. 
Indeed we see very little of anything. And 
there are aspects of the world which do not 
directly encourage our faith, our hope or our 
love, yet make a demand upon us for these 
graces in highest measure. There are aspects 
of nature which affect us like an overture of 
Wagner, in which everything is said to 
be "enormous, savage, elementary, like the 
murmur of forests and the roar of animals." 
These aspects of nature help us to understand 
our own low development and that of our 
race. The voices of beasts and birds, and 
below these the voices of winds and waves, 
are like inarticulate expressions of spirits 
which are not yet fully conscious. We share 
the chaos; we detect it in our baser moods 
and duller moments. 



32 

But suppose we look up, instead of down. 

The highest expressions of truth and harmony, 

in poetry, music, science, philosophy, religion, 

give us encouraging hints of a state into 

which we have not yet risen; but to which 

we belong, as the bird unhatched belongs to 

the light and the air. And even when we 

look down, let us thank God and take courage. 

For the lower facts serve the higher, and 

build its foundations. 

" The fiery pillars of the morns 
Kest on the sunken nights." 

The musical composer catches hints from 
winds, brooks, resounding seas, plashing rains 
and thunder-peals, as well as from bird-notes 
and tones of the human voice. So does the 
poet find in natural facts the pigments to 
paint his thought in word-pictures that glow 
in his lines like Raphael's on the canvas. 

It grows upon us as a rational conviction, 
and as a happy faith, that we need nothing 
but to live according to nature; that is, in 



33 

harmony * with the laws of the world. By 
nature, is meant the whole system of things; 
and the whole system of things must be an 
expression of the will of God, as well as of 
his honor and wisdom. Harmony with the 
will of God is the same thing as harmony 
with the natural order. 

I do not think that the churches have 
ever realized the spiritual value of natural 
knowledge, of physical science, of good 
literature and of intellectual culture. Every 
fact is a doorway into the temple of truth. 
Eeligion will never grow robust and masterful 
unless it is nourished with a stronger diet. 
Piety remains puny when it is fed exclusively 
on emotional mush, and faith is feeble if it 
be not exercised in the open air of K £ act. The 
difficulty is, we do not appeal directly to the 
original instincts of the soul; we speak of 
religion as if it were something foreign and 
imported, something which is not as natural 
as life, because a part of life and the very 



34 "as natural as life." 

inmost part, but as something which must be 
inserted, or forced upon man from without. 
It fails to connect itself with the actual 
experiences of men and women in the life 
they are obliged to live every day of the 
week. It points to a heaven that does not 
touch the earth, and to a God who does not 
dwell with men. 

It is not chiefly by goody-goody talk of 
morals or of religion that the higher life 
of men is nourished and strengthened; it is 
by helping them to see and feel their 
relations to the large and beautiful order of 
nature and humanity, and to see in that 
order the kingdom of God. It is by clearing 
their vision and expanding their sympathy; 
by opening to them the reality and wonder of 
the world they already inhabit; by showing 
them that the inward and the outward are 
two sides of one great fact. One Spirit 
pervades all things, as it pervades all beings. 
What we call Supernature is never absent 



35 

from nature. Something akin to our souls is 
in grass and trees and stones, as well as in 
our poor relations, the dumb animals ; and if 
there are higher beings that people the realms 
of inaccessible light, they too must be our 
kindred, and we shall slowly climb to their 
company. 

We must make room in our minds, in our 
tastes, in our sympathies, in our religion, and 
in our lives, for all we can learn both of 
nature and of humanity. We must multiply 
points of contact — thoughtful and loving 
contact — with these large, rich regions of 
God's creation. We ought to know that we 
live in them as truly as we live in our houses. 
When we realize this, perhaps we shall be 
more concerned to brighten and beautify our 
surroundings, to put away physical and social 
disorder and ugliness, to cheer the lives of 
our daily companions, and to uplift mankind 
to the levels of truth, justice and good-will; 
for these, too, are "as natural as life," 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 



Who to himself is law no law doth need, 
Offends no law, and is a king indeed. 

— Chapman. 

It is the mind that makes the man; and our vigor 
is in our immortal soul. — Ovid. 

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself. 

— Montaigne. 

No man can produce great things who is not 
thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself. 

— Lowell. 

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such will be 
the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by 
the thoughts. ... A man should be upright; not be 
kept upright. — Marcus Aurelius. 

You are doing a man no good unless you are 
making him better. — Bufas Ellis. 

Great weakness is often produced by indulgences 
which seem of no importance. — Molinos. 

What shall it profit a man to gain the whole 
world, if he lose himself? — Jesus. 

(38) 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 



" Great God, I ask no higher pelf 
Than that I may not disappoint myself." 

— Thoreau. 

Christians of all creeds are agreed with 
deep-thoughted men of other names in one 
thing: They believe that the Supreme Mind 
is in such direct connection with the mind 
of man as to influence our thoughts, feelings 
and purposes; and they call this inflowing 
divine breath the Holy Spirit, because its 
tendency is to make holy spirits of us. They 
also agree that it is in each man's power to 
resist this pure influence, and thus to weaken 
its operation. 

"Quench not the spirit/' says Paul. But 
does his warning refer to the Spirit of God, 



40 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

or to the spirit of man? Probably to the 
former; but practically it comes to the same 
thing, whichever we take it; for we cannot 
resist the divine influence without impairing 
our own life, nor impair our own life without 
diminishing the divine influence. Whenever 
we put aside any suggestion of truth, any 
impulse to goodness, or any prompting to right 
conduct, we obscure the inward light. And 
since every measure of light or life which we 
enjoy is given to us by "the Power not 
ourselves," it is plain that we can know 
nothing about the Spirit of God except as it 
is manifest in the spirit of man. 

Therefore we may say that the Spirit of 
God and the spirit of man are too close to be 
separated. In resisting the divine prompting 
man weakens his own faculties. In turning 
away from the light he obscures his own 
vision. Who can draw the line, and say, 
"This true thought or this right feeling is 
God's inspiration, which I must heed or sink 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 41 

into darkness ; and that true thought or right 
feeling is merely human, and I may do with 
it as I please " ? 

The life within, is it not divine as well as 
human? The fountain, out of which our 
being comes like a stream, how shall we find 
it if not by following up the stream ? The 
sun, of which each human soul is a projected 
ray, how shall we find it but by following 
up the ray ? But the stream reveals the 
fountain and the ray reveals the sun. As 
James Freeman Clarke says, "In every mind 
there is a door opening inward toward God." 

" Quench not the spirit." It is a word 
of deep wisdom and warning. It means, 
among other things, "Do thyself no harm." 
Preserve your individuality. Do not impair 
the life-forces. Do not disqualify yourself 
for receiving impressions of reality from the 
world around, or illuminations from the light 
within. Do not suppress that original and 
spontaneous activity which is proper to your 



42 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

own nature. The only serious danger lies in 
arrested or perverted development; and this 
comes from cheeking or misdirecting the vital 
energy. Theodore Munger says, "The thing 
we are apt to fail of to-day is not breadth 
and thoroughness of knowledge of what is 
about us, but knowledge of what is above us 
and within us." 

We quench the spirit, then, when we darken 
our own minds or disobey our higher instincts 
and rational impulses. Our being weakens 
and withers like the leaf when its connection 
with the life-giving tree is interrupted. We 
are kept in health and soundness only by our 
harmony with the law and order of nature, 
which is the law and order of earth and 
heaven. 

Every substance in nature has its own 
peculiar qualities; each kind of wood, metal 
or stone, each liquid, gas or element, has its 
own way of behaving; every tree has its own 
foliage, every seed its own product, every 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 43 

flower its own fragrance, every fruit its 
own flavor, every meat its own savor. No 
substance loses its proper qualities without 
being debased or destroyed. The iron that 
ceases to be fibrous may be good for casting 
at the foundry, but is unfit for the forge ; the 
wood or stone that has lost its cohesion is 
spoiled for building material; even a cloud 
on the pane of glass suspends its transparency ; 
every degree of adulteration lowers the value, 
as when milk is mixed with water. There are, 
indeed, valuable compounds, but the new value 
is gained by giving up the old. Nature is 
full of these spiritual parables. 

In a deep way, we are all alike, else we 
could not understand each other. In other 
ways, we all differ, else we should be stupidly 
uninteresting. Each human being is a new 
specimen, an original, marked inside and 
out with capacities for new experiences, 
achievements and uses. To destroy indi- 
viduality for the sake of uniformity would 



44 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

take the charm out of life and society; for 
the charm consists largely in unlikeness, in 
variety, and in the surprises of originality. 
There are valuable combinations or organiza- 
tions of human beings; and no temple, no 
cathedral, no " white city," can be so noble or 
beautiful as good society would be. Each one 
of us is bound to suppress all tendencies or 
qualities in himself which would unsuit him 
for living with others. Yet all that contributes 
to his own personal completeness must also 
enrich and enlarge his contribution to the 
common life. And, as no one of us ought to 
debase or injure his own being, so no one 
of us has any business to require of himself 
or of his neighbor any suppression or mutila- 
tion of personality ; no, not even to secure 
the benefits of union, co-operation or fellow- 
ship. 

Any religion deserving the name must teach 
this great lesson of self-respect or self-preserva- 
tion. If a man wishes to be somebody, can 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 45 

he do any better than to be himself? 
Let him stand quietly, yet stoutly, for this 
proprietorship. He does not gain or keep his 
own standing by pushing at other people, but 
by letting the better spirit, the deep kingly 
reason, rule him, and have its way with him. 
Let him become a solid positive quantity; 
and the place or part which belongs to him 
in creation will be forever secure. 

There need be no crowding; for in the 
world of souls there is as much room as there 
is in heaven for the stars. If every man, 
woman and child on this planet could win 
the greatest fulness of life, the richest 
development of all personal qualities, and if 
every mind could think and love and live like 
a god, there would be far fewer collisions 
and. far less confusion than now. These 
multiplied human forces would play without 
friction, and in utmost freedom, 

" As sunbeams stream through liberal space, 
And nothing jostle or displace." 



46 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

This is well said and sung by George Mac- 
Donald : 

u O God of mountains, stars and boundless spaces, 
O God of freedom and of joyous hearts, 
When Thy face looketh forth from all men's faces, 
There will be room enough in crowded marts." 

" Self-preservation is the first law of nature." 
This proverb has a higher application than we 
have realized. It has been applied chiefly to 
the care of our bodies. We are strongly 
charged with an instinct which makes us shun 
a danger, dodge a blow, keep out of fire or 
water, and let alone what we suppose to be 
poison. We are on the lookout for good 
chances to get a living, and to add to the 
living whatever makes life comfortable and 
pleasant. 

But we do not so easily get acquainted with 
our higher nature and needs; we do not so 
soon learn to avoid dangers to our minds and 
hearts — the dangers of unwholesome principles 
or disorderly emotions. To catch malarial 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 47 

fever, to lose an arm in some machinery, or 
to be suffocated in foul air, is felt as a 
calamity. Why should a man be less careful 
to shun exposures which impair his power to 
think, to reason, to remember, to judge ; or 
which starve or poison or waste his affections, 
or scorch his soul wdth fiery passions; or 
which drown him in a sea of pollutions; 
or which weaken his will, and thus paralyze 
his powers of action; or which in any way 
spoil his best chances of making a true man 
of himself? 

A society made up of people all alike 
would be dreadfully tiresome; and if all my 
companions are only echoes of myself, I 
might as well be alone. The divine plan 
does not seem to be that men should be ail 
pressed or moulded into one shape, like bricks 
or bullets ; but rather that they should grow 
in freedom, differing as naturally as *tree-leaves, 
landscapes, and cloud-forms, no two of which 
are exactly alike. The law of self-preservation 



48 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

requires that each individual should save 
himself from being deformed, mutilated, or 
pressed out of his proper shape, either by- 
submission to false authority, by artificial 
methods of education, by social pressure, or 
even by the influences and institutions of 
religion. The worst use we can make of the 
name of God is to scare a man out of his 
own growth. A free church or a free state 
should encourage every form of talent and 
every variety of gift and genius; just as a 
growing tree finds room in the air and light 
for the expansion of its own limbs and leaves. 
Amid such variety there will be no lack of 
unity; for all the forms which spring from 
one root will share the common type, and will 
differ only in their sub-types. There is no 
objection to one man's being much like 
another, if only he grows so, and thus comes 
honestly by the likeness. To cultivate oddities 
and eccentricities, to differ from others out of 
mere caprice, would only give us a race 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 49 

of cranks and disagreeable pretenders. We 
quench the spirit by unsocial and anti- 
social wilfulness as surely as by cowardly 
conformity. 

But it is best for the individual, and best 
for the race, that every one should live his 
own life and cultivate his own inward garden ; 
that he should courageously do his own 
thinking and stand to the verdict of his own 
judgment; that he should give fair play to 
his own sentiments and tastes, and that he 
should work out his own career and style 
of character. Yet society is honey-combed with 
insincerities, with the affectation of sentiments 
and opinions which have no inward reality. 
" At all cost/' says Carlyle, " it is to be 
prayed by all men that shams may cease." 

If a man is not to see for himself, why did 
the Creator give him a pair of eyes ? If he 
is not to live his own life, why is it made 
necessary that he should do his own eating, 
breathing, and sleeping? He must have a 



50 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

certain place wherein to live and move and 
have his being; and why is he not entitled 
to fill that place ? Why is he not entitled to 
an orbit of his own as truly as any one of 
the planets ? And since in each of us there 
is incarnated some part of the power and 
wisdom and love of the Eternal, is it not a 
profanation and a sacrilege to quench or 
smother our own spirits ? 

But this doctrine is quite radical and 
revolutionary. It puts us to shame for 
allowing our lives to be ruled by what 
other people say and do; for overrating the 
importance of conventionalities which are 
burdensome, and of social usages which our 
reason disapproves. It runs in the face of 
all those methods of training children by 
which we overlay and overload their minds 
and check the growth of their faculties. It 
condemns us for putting into them so much 
that is ours, instead of trying to draw out 
what is theirs. It rebukes us for discouraging 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 51 

those inborn peculiarities which are neither 
defects nor excesses. 

In every child there is an original fountain 
of thought, feeling, and action which ought to 
be allowed to flow without obstruction in 
all of the channels of right and reasonable 
living. Where there is any degree of mal- 
formation, from hereditary or other causes, 
this divine force will flow in disorderly 
streams. Then the channels require correction; 
but the stream is always to be trusted. It 
may be choked or misdirected, but it is the 
river of life ; and our business is not to arrest 
the flow, but to see that the precious tide 
does not run to waste or mischief. 

Of course, every child needs a start. No, 
not a start; that is given with life itself. 
But it needs regulative guidance. There is 
no case on record where a new-born baby 
dressed itself and immediately began to 
go alone. But parents, nurses and teachers 
cannot add anything to native endowments; 



52 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

they can only preserve and wisely direct the 
inborn forces until the child's own discretion 
has time to grow. As fast as it grows, it is 
entitled to take the lead ; that is, to take care 
of itself. Then the command is, "Hands off! 
Let God do His own work in His own way." 

We sometimes hear of grown-up persons — 
women oftener than men — whose fathers or 
mothers never allowed them to acquire the 
freedom of directing their own lives, but 
treated them in part as permanent babies. 
Such parents may act from love, but certainly 
they do not act from wisdom. Practically, 
they deform and enslave their children. And 
there are some who enslave themselves in 
trying to save their children from the 
discipline of self-activity. 

Nothing is so weakening as repression, or 
enforced idleness, which soon becomes willing 
idleness. The child's power can only be 
developed by use. Discretion and skill are 
learned through the blunders of practice. Do 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 53 

we not learn to talk by stammering, and to 
walk by stumbling ? When the little one 
first begins to reach out and grasp, and cry 
for something, it is an inspired impulse to 
activity. Then comes the mother's opportunity 
to encourage independence, by letting the child 
help itself as fast and as far as it can do so 
with safety. If, at the same time, the 
affections are wakened and warmed, the little 
hand that is now reached out to take will 
soon be reached out to give. 

Thus, in the young life, three things will 
appear in close connection: thought, love and 
action — the triple apparatus with which every 
well-born child is set up in business. In 
the free use of this apparatus, comes self- 
possession. These powers of thought, feel- 
ing and action belong to the child; indeed, 
they are the child. They express the divine 
image — the likeness of the heavenly Father, 
whom we think of a,s all-wise, all-good and 
almighty. 



54 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

But native qualities do not always appear 
in the same combinations. When the mammas 
get together, each can tell of some remarkable 
thing said or clone by her little one; but 
no two of the darlings have said or done 
the same thing. Each baby is an original; 
each gives out its own peculiar music; each 
improvises its own little drama. 

Now, if this development be not interrupted 
or put under the pressure of some uniformity- 
machine, in the family, the school, or the 
church, each child will develop some special 
tendencies and peculiarities, just as it will 
have its own face and features, voice and 
manner. Think what we all lose by these 
interruptions. We dwell in a society where 
a few conventional forms are forever repeated; 
whereas our world of men and women might 
be vastly enriched by beautiful diversities, so 
that we should never get tired of each other. 

Let us not repress or quench the divinely 
given human forces. Let us preserve with 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 55 

great care the spontaneous element in the 
children and in ourselves. This is the source 
of all originality, all genius and personal 
power. The wrong done to Chinese girls by 
confining their feet in iron shoes is not so 
dreadful as this other wrong of cramping and 
misshaping the mind and character. 

We not only suppress speech and action ; 
we arrest thought and feeling, and drive the 
forces of life back to stagnate in their 
fountain. I think thousands on thousands of 
people suffer a vague sense of unhappiness 
which may have had its origin in the violence 
done to their inborn faculties when they were 
too young and tender to stand up against the 
tyranny ; a tyranny not always harsh, but often 
unwisely kind. There are other thousands 
whose native tendencies were checked but not 
subdued; who asserted their liberty in ill- 
tempered and disorderly ways, like the stream 
which gathers force to sweep away the dam 
and desolate the valley. 



56 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

Not all lives are thus misshapen and 
perverted. There are beautiful characters and 
careers in which the divinely human elements 
have freely unfolded according to orderly 
creative processes. There are men and women 
who can see more, feel deeplier, and do nobler 
than we; men and women who get more out 
of- life and out of the world, and put more 
in, because they have better possession of 
themselves. The conditions which make us 
sigh make them sing: Browning says of such 
an one: 

" Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke. 

A look was in his eye, as if where'er he gazed 
There stood a star." 

Why do we call such a man inspired ? 
Precisely because in him the spirit has not 
been quenched. But if some find the world 
so good and fair, while to others it is dull 
and humdrum, or if some gather luscious 
fruit from the trees that grow along the 






SELF-PRESERVATION. 57 

common ways, while others find everything 
tasteless or bitter, must not the difference be 
in their own inward conditions ? In those 
the spirit is alive and wakeful; in these, it 
is sick or torpid. 

It is riot to be supposed that every one of 
us might become a great scholar, poet, prophet, 
artist, inventor, statesman or philosopher. 
Nobody can give a recipe for the manufacture 
of genius, nor lay down a set of rules by 
which one child can be made a Pericles and 
another a Demosthenes, one a Saint John and 
another a Saint Paul, one a Michael Angelo 
and another a Shakspere, one a Tennyson and 
another an Emerson, one a Lucretia Mott 
and another a Fanny Kemble. The genial 
humor of Charles Lamb, the brilliant wit of 
Sidney Smith, the creative power of George 
Eliot are no product of college or kindergarten. 
They grow from original qualities which can 
no more be explained than w^e can explain 
the differing odors of the flowers. But we 



58 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

should never have heard of these famous men 
and women, who have brightened and blessed 
the world, if they had been kept under 
extinguishers, or had quenched the light in 
themselves. 

It is said that in Massachusetts there are 
two hundred thousand acres of unused land 
which might be made to add immensely to 
the common wealth and welfare. But we let 
far finer resources run to waste. Think of 
the unused manhood and the suppressed 
womanhood ! Think of the thousands of 
children whose lives grow all out of shape 
from the pressure of evils and follies they 
know not how to measure or resist ! Think 
of the human temples of the Holy Spirit 
which are profaned and desolated! Think of 
the deaf ears that turn away from the 
beautiful and holy truths widely and faithfully 
spoken! Think of the vast howling deserts 
of humanity which might bud and blossom 
as the rose, and grow fair with culture like 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 59 

the garden of the Lord ! As there are plants 
that grow stunted and deformed in the dim 
light of caverns, there are homes or work- 
shops in which men and women live or 
toil amid cheerless shadows ; and there are 
conditions of ignorance and moral exposure 
by which multitudes miss those helps toward 
the better life which are freely offered 
to all. 

"What is not good for the swarm is not good 
for the bee." We must prosper or suffer to- 
gether. One startling and awful fact is being 
brought home to us by the modern study of 
social problems ; namely, this : That spiritual 
activity — whether we refer to the divine or 
the human — is a collective and public as well 
as a private and individual operation; and 
that the selfishness of one part of society 
can cut off the spiritual supplies of another 
part by consigning them to physical, intellectual 
and moral privations, and to an unwholesome 
environment which makes low living practically 



60 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

inevitable. Those who draw every breath in 
an atmosphere charged with fine and helpful 
influences, and who are surrounded from 
infancy with every means of culture and 
every aid to completeness, may for a time be 
innocently unaware of the exposure of their 
less fortunate brethren. We always lose 
by any attempt to secede from our proper 
human connections. But we quench the 
holiest spirit in ourselves whenever we 
harden our hearts against the " submerged " 
millions, or turn indifferently away from 
those who are in a state of arrested develop- 
ment. 

It is cruel to say that these childish masses 
"might help themselves/' so long as they do 
not know how, and have no adequate means 
of finding out. Dungeon walls are not more 
impervious to light than is the darkened 
mind. Manacled limbs are not more helpless 
than is the unawakened spirit. And the dead 
can come out of their graves as easily as the 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 61 

more depressed classes can rise under the 
triple pressure of their own inertia, their sense 
of hopelessness, and the crowding of those 
above them. 

Yet in the lowest and least promising 
conditions the seeds of all virtues and all 
excellences may lie dormant, awaiting the 
quickening touch of truth and love. Blessed 
are they who freely give the spiritual impulse 
they have freely received ! Blessed are they 
who prepare the way of the Lord by opening 
the gates of opportunity, by removing social 
and economical obstructions, by " leveling up- 
ward," and by wisely improving the paths 
along which humanity may move toward a 
worthier destiny ! The educated and prosperous 
can find their own way of safety only by 
yielding to the self -forgetting impulses of 
sympathy and service. This is to obey in 
spirit the injunction of Jesus : " Sell all, give 
to the poor, and have treasure in heaven." 
Whatever our possessions may be, spiritual or 



62 SELF-PRESERVATION. 

material, we must make them available to the 
common welfare — or lose our souls. 

This subject ought to throw some light on 
the meaning of Christianity, which seeks 
completeness of life for all mankind. Herein 
also is the root of true democracy or free 
society, and "the government of all the 
people by all the people, for all the people,"— 
a system which can never be realized till 
the individual members of society are self- 
governed and alive from within. This is 
what all reforms look toward — the proper 
freedom of the human mind, or its emancipation 
from all authority which checks the action of 
reason and conscience. This is the meaning 
of the pleas that are now made for the 
enfranchisement of women, for the wiser 
care of children, for the better education of 
all the people. It means that no power on 
earth shall defeat the soul, or quench the spirit 
of man, or mar the loving purpose of God. 



SELF-PRESERVATION. 63 

It means the orderly development of every 
human being and of every human faculty. 

We are born to live in society, yet to live 
as individuals. Self-preservation is the prime 
condition of this two-fold development. It 
requires that we should both accept help and 
render help; also that we should both resist 
harm and refrain from harm. Personality is 
impaired and society suffers if we violate 
either of these four precepts. 

Certainly we should value, for public and 
private reasons, the laws and liberties of the 
land and the agencies of common welfare 
and culture. Certainly we should welcome 
for ourselves the tender and gentle inward 
ministry of thoughts and feelings that are 
like angel visitants. We should hold our own 
hearts loyal and responsive to all the holy and 
happy voices that are best heard in silence. 

Is it not worth while to keep open and 
clear, for ourselves and for all mankind, these 
paths that lead upward toward perfection? 



HEART-ACHE AND HEART'S-EASE. 



I fold my old coat me about, 
And carol long, and carol stout. 

— The Pilgrim. 

There is no time so miserable but a man may be 
true. — Shakspere. 

A sickly self-love, full of self-pity, cannot be 
touched without screaming. Touch it with the end 
of your finger, and it thinks itself flayed alive. 

— Fenelon. 

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the 
actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance 
to it. — J. N. Grou. 

Ah, if you knew what peace there is in an accepted 
sorrow! — Mdme. Guy on. 

Every lot is happy to one who bears it with 
tranquillity. — Boethius. 

Why should I start at the plow of my Lord that 
makes deep furrows on my soul ? He is no idle 
husbandman; he purposeth a crop. 

— 8. Rutherford. 

Why art thou cast down, O my soul ? Hope thou 
in God! — Psalmist. 

Then the devil leaveth him; and behold angels 

came and ministered unto him. 

— Gospel Narrative. 
(66) 



HEART-ACHE AND HEART'S-EASE. 



"All of us have cause 
To wail the dimming of our shining star; 
But none can cure our harms by wailing them." 

— Shakspere. 

" Hushed be every thought that springs 
From out the bitterness of things! " 

— Wordsworth. 

Our deepest experiences have been described 
as a silent dialogue between the soul and 
God. The soul speaks through its sense 
of need, imperfection, fear : God answers 
in our hopes, our trust, our clearer vision. 
Our emotions are like divine lessons, or 
like drawings toward some higher destiny, — 
lessons we may fail to learn, drawings we may 
easily resist. We are creatures of passion, 
weakness, fault, aspiration : we oscillate and 



vacillate between content and restlessness, joy 
and pain. 

The shady side or the seamy side of life 
must have a meaning and a purpose. Vinet 
says; " Nothing teaches the soul so many 
things as sorrow " ; and the wise Teacher 
pronounces a blessing on them that mourn. 
Something like suffering seems to be set 
down in the programme, — provided for as a 
part of our earthly lot. The infant smiles; 
but also the infant weeps. All the little ones 
have their griefs; and those who are too old 
or too proud for tears do not escape. 

Literature is full of confessions : human 
breath escapes in sighs as well as in laughter ; 
and often through the music of joy runs an 
undertone, a minor key, of sadness. But the 
loud sounds of the world are not the sounds 
of woe. Mirth is noisy. Sorrow lowers 
its voice. Often it is silent, muffled, and 
suppressed within the heart; and, when 
a smile is on the lips, there may be a 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 69 

wearying and weakening sense, as of inward 
bleeding. 

Multitudes, both, of men and women, live 
under the shadow of some nameless, unspoken 
grief, — some disappointment in their life- 
plans, their business, ambitions, affections, — 
their hopes blighted, the brightness of their 
morning turned to a dull, gray day. 

What a world of heart-aches comes from 
the maladjustment of personal relations, — 
from chronic misunderstandings, and from the 
apparent impossibility of good understanding, 
between those who must nevertheless share 
the same home and the same lot, if not for 
better, then for worse ! Sometimes there are 
brothers and sisters, who have been dandled 
on the same knees and have slept in the 
same chamber, but who, as they grow up, find 
that they cannot speak to each other without 
exciting some antagonism or antipathy, — never 
any sweet agreement, but always some petty 
difference, some jangle or jar of temperament. 



70 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 

Between husband and wife, who could not 
and would not separate, there may be all 
degrees of inharrnony, and so on both sides 
all degrees of heart-ache. How many people 
carry the marks of some inward bruise, 
inflicted all unawares ! 

11 These heavy feet still in the mire 

Go trampling blossoms without end ; 
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust 
Amid the heart-strings of a friend." 

Many are heavy-hearted because over- 
weighted with sensitiveness. They feel every 
tone, look, or breath of criticism or disapproval, 
or they crave sympathy and appreciation, and 
wither in loneliness and neglect. The world 
moves on, and they seem left behind, over- 
looked, unconsidered, forgotten, as if they 
were counted only for nobodies. 

Others are wretched because they are full 
of ungratified desires. Like caged birds, they 
beat their wings against the bars of hard 
unyielding circumstance. Or perhaps, with 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 71 

strong, active impulses, they do not know how 
to place themselves anywhere in the busy 
world. 

How many seem to themselves the victims 
of a pitiless, blind fate, which consigns them 
to failure and defeat, or shuts them up in 
conditions that affect them like a prison-yard, 
where they are loaded with ball and chain, 
and condemned to toil that brings no reward ! 
A sharp pain or an acute attack of illness 
may soon be over and done with, leaving one 
in better health than before. One can bear 
the suffering that promises to be short-lived; 
but there are chronic miseries that grow stale, 
that rouse no fortitude, but leave one to settle 
into life-long weariness and irresolution. 

Some — God only knows how many! — are 
born under a shadow, — born with very little 
capacity for joy or hope. What can be more 
pathetic and pitiful than the look of age on 
the faces of little children that never smile, — 
children that may grow to manhood and 



72 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 

womanhood, and yet never discover that the 
sunshine is God's smile, and that life is his 
good gift. These are the victims of hereditary 
wrong, of unloving marriage: they come into 
an evil inheritance. Ah, if only science or 
religion could, somehow, teach the human race 
to stop this onflowiDg stream of misery, so 
that no " black drop" of it might flow into 
the veins of any helpless babe ! 

What another world of heart-ache is summed 
up in the word "loss," — bereavement! 

" Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead? 
Who with vain longing seeketh not to borrow 
From stranger eyes the home lights that have fled?" 

Who has not longed through the night-watches 

" For the toncli of a vanished hand, 
And the sonnd of a voice that is still"? 

Yet keener is the pain when self-reproach 
mingles with our thought of the departed. 

u It takes each failing on our part, 
And burns it in upon the heart 
With caustic power and cruel art." 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 73 

Our own faults are indeed the heavier part 
of the burden we carry about in memory. To 
finer natures ; the wofullest heart-ache is the 
knowledge that we have caused another's heart 
to ache. But, when any experience of wrong 
done or of wrong endured has once made us 
sad, it is easier to be sad again ; and one may 
form a habit of brooding which darkens all 
the day and doubly darkens all the night. 

Does not this give us a hint about the cure 
of heart-ache? "Why art thou cast down? 
Hope thou in God." Occupy the mind with 
good; turn the thought to higher and better 
things. 

Bodily pain is caused by pressure upon 
some nerve of sensation. Withdraw the 
pressure, and the pain ceases. An excess of 
blood rushes to the spot or is arrested at the 
spot which has been cut or bruised ; the blood 
presses hard upon the nerves, and perhaps 
produces heat, or inflammation. Relief comes 
from drawing away this excess of blood. Just 



74 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 

so when the forces of thought and * feeling are 
centred upon a sad fact, — no matter what, — 
the mind suffers pain or grief from this 
abnormal pressure. Relief comes from turning 
the mental forces in another direction, — 
forward, outward, upward, — away from the 
sore point. We must make room for other 
thoughts, feelings, interests; and, if these are 
worthy of us, the process of healing will begin 
at once. Of course, to plunge into empty 
frivolity and dissipation — to try to drown or 
bury our woes in sensual indulgence, or to 
seek fortitude in coarse stimulants — is to 
trust to a remedy which is worse than the 
disease. "Hope thou in God." Find relief 
by bringing the being into the harmonies of 
law, light, and love. 

Hence the curative effect of all honest work, 
all wise use of our active faculties. Indeed, 
our disquiet is often caused by the uneasy 
stirring within us of powers not sufficiently 
exercised. Idle men and women, with genius 



75 

or talent of any kind, are often victims of 
depression. Eobert Leighton, a Scotch poet, 
speaks of his art as medicine: — 

"If I am long 
Without the exercise of poesie, 
My spirit ails, my body's somewhat wrong, 
My heart beats, * Woe is me! ' " 

But all his ailments leave, and body and 
mind come well again, when the stream of 
rhythmic thoughts begins to flow. 

" And so, I doubt not, his creation makes 
A healthier current in the Painter's veins, 
Or that his marble inspiration takes 
Away the Sculptor's pains. 

u And Music, which usurps a sweet control 

In any heart through which its marvel floats, 
Is physic to the body and the soul 
Of him that builds the notes. 

" The spirit craves to do its noblest thing: 
It is a poison in the blood supprest. 
And thus the Arts are medicines, that bring 
Healing and joy and rest." 

Not the fine arts alone, but all the useful 
ones, have this curative virtue. Any worthy 



76 HEART-ACHE AND TIEART's-EASE. 

industry, any occupation of mind or hand about 
our proper business, lightens care, soothes 
grief, heals hurts, and drives away the blue 
devils. "In idleness alone is perpetual despair." 
There is no peace for us in good-for-nothingness. 
If once the higher powers in us are awake, 
they chafe against our own sluggishness ; they 
will not let us rest, they glare at us in our 
very dreams. 

But all such misery is mercy: it compels 
us to realize that we are not made in vain. 
Before the sunlight of honest occupation 
the shadows fly. We do not need to shun 
sadness nor to seek cheerfulness : when we 
attend to our proper affairs, the sadness goes 
of itself and the cheerfulness comes of itself. 
Indeed, we forget to mind our own moods, 
sad or glad: — 

" Not enjoyment and not sorrow 
In our destined end or way ; 
But to act, that each to-morrow 
Find us farther than to-day." 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 77 

There is a deep social reason for much of 
this inward restlessness and urgency. All 
that is best in us struggles for expression 
because it does not belong to us alone. It 
belongs to others ; the goods must be delivered. 
Xo gift, no talent, or faculty, is merely private 
property. The right use of our powers, 
our opportunities and our time puts us in 
direct relation to our fellow-beings. Whether 
it be a day's work, a sermon, or a song, 
we owe it to somebody. Even a silent med- 
itation in solitude may fit us for some truer 
service. 

" What shall I say ? In my heart words are springing 
Transcending all speech, and as deep as the sea; 
All that is best in me breathes in my singing, 
Binding forever your spirits to me." 

When we allow our best life to unfold and 
express itself in word or deed, or to go out 
from us as pure influence, we grow like God, 
whose utterance creation is. And always we 
find it more blessed to give than to receive. 



78 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 

We are ourselves served best by serving 
others. Maggie Tulliver was helped out of 
dismal moods when "she learned to look at 
her own life as an insignificant part of a 
divinely guided whole." She read in Thomas 
a Kempis something like this : " The love of 
thyself doth hurt thee more than anything 
else in the world." The cure of heart-ache, 
then, is to be found in occupations which take 
us away from our petty self-regardings, our 
self-pityings, our morbid broodings, and which 
connect our life with other lives and with 
other affairs, or merge our individual interest 
in the larger whole. Our private sorrows will 
look smaller when we accustom ourselves to 
care for the larger life of the world, for the 
good of the community, for the public welfare, 
for the spread of truth and righteousness 
among mankind. The man who keeps public 
spirit alive in his own bosom, or who really 
cares for those who are near to him, has such 
large and varied interests that he has neither 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 79 

time nor inclination to cosset and cuddle his 
own griefs. 

The craving for sympathy is natural enough, 
and it ought never to be treated harshly, nor 
thought of as a fault; but it easily becomes 
ignoble and very morbid, because very selfish. 
"Oh, if somebody only knew how much I 
suffer, and would suffer with me ! " But 
would it not be quite as well if I could 
myself forget it, — put it out of my own sight 
as much as possible ? Why should I wish to 
lay my burdens on others, or make their 
hearts ache because mine does ? It might be 
very noble in them to share the pain; but 
would it be noble in me to put it on 
them ? Better that I seek to lighten the 
load of some other than that I be looking 
around for some other to carry mine. Would 
it be worth while to occupy anybody's 
time with the recital of my private trials 
and ailments ? What if everybody should 
engage in exchanging this kind of goods ? 



80 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 

Would the world be enriched by such com- 
merce ? 

Love is the true and sure cure of heart-ache, 
even if it is often the cause of it. But what 
is love ? I think the genuine article is wise, 
unselfish interest in other people's welfare; 
interest in other lives than my own; it is to 
be happy in their happiness. If I have but 
little happiness of my own, this is one way 
to borrow some, — by being glad in the 
gladness of others. As age comes on, I can 
cheer my own wintry days with sunbeams 
gathered from the springtime of young people 
and from the smiling faces of children. This 
will save me from the shame of casting a 
shadow across their life ; the light in my face 
will be a reflection of their own. 

"Hope thou in God." We are saved by 
hope; that is, by looking forward, and not 
backward. 

" Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these : "It might have been.' " 



Well, then, if these words are so sad, why 
say them or dwell on them ? Things might 
have been very different, it is true; but that 
is not worth saying or thinking more than 
once. John Weiss says, "An accomplished 
fact takes its place in the divine order, 
against which it is sacrilege to rebel." A 
healthy mind doesn't stop to look back long 
at success, much less at defeat. Such a mind 
turns promptly from what has been to what 
comes next, whatever it may be. If we are 
foolish and sentimental enough, we can get a 
deal of misery even out of our past blessings. 
Burns for once drops into a wail, — 

" Ye'll break my heart, ye little birds, 
That warble from the flowery thorn ; 
Ye mind me of departed joys, 
Departed never to return." 

And why should the memory of departed joys 
turn to pain and break one's heart ? Rather 
let us take them as pledges of more joys to 
come, as samples of the good things our 



82 HEART-ACHE AND HEART's-EASE. 

Father has in store, even as the old Hebrews 
renewed heart and hope by singing, " Hitherto 
hath the Lord helped." 

I am sure, too, that there is a fountain 
of heart's-ease in the brave acceptance of 
whatever sorrows and trials fall to our lot. 
When Jesus stands fronting the cross, he 
says to himself, as well as to his faint-hearted 
followers, "The cup which my Father hath 
given me, shall I not drink it ? n 

When a man takes on himself a heavy 
burden because he knows it belongs to him 
to carry it, he feels a glow of satisfaction 
because he can. The strength keeps coming 
to him. It almost seems as if the burden 
gave him wings. But, if he is sulky or 
cowardly, or if he whimpers and pities 
himself, or envies other people who seem to 
have no loads to carry, he will have plenty 
of heart-ache, and back-ache, too. There are 
many worse things in the world than burden- 
bearing; and we shall miss some of the best 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 83 

things if we try to find an easy path through 
life by shirking our proper tasks. 

Humboldt thought, "It is quite possible to 
suffer many and great griefs, and yet not 
to feel thoroughly unhappy in consequence, 
but rather to find our moral and intellectual 
nature so purified and exalted thereby that 
we would not change this feeling for any 
other." Probably few of us can realize this 
in the midst of trouble. "No trial for the 
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. 
Nevertheless, afterward it worketh the peace- 
able fruits of righteousness." Certainly, people 
who never taste anything but sweets, who 
are always and altogether comfortable and 
easy-going, are not the ones who make the 
world's noblest history. They are apt to be 
indifferent and content with animal satisfaction. 
Nothing rouses them to heroism or spurs them 
to seek moral excellence for themselves or for 
others. Suffering, or pain, taken alone, is 
not a good in itself. It is a condition of 



84 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 

discipline. It develops fortitude and soul- 
strength. It reveals and cures weaknesses, 
and it schools us to sympathy. No great 
thing is accomplished without pains-taking, — 
a most significant word! Indeed, the world 
is continually redeemed and saved from evil 
by the brave souls who bring suffering on 
themselves because they are full of sympathy, 
full of self-sacrifice, and willing to bear the 
woes of others. Hear Coleridge: — 

"Was it meet, 
When my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, 
That I should dream away the intrusted hours 
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart 
With feelings all too delicate for use ? " 

Think of Jesus in the garden on the night 
of his betrayal, — the last night of his life: 
"My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto 
death." Just at that moment his enemies 
were jubilant, exultant. They had set a trap 
that was sure to catch him. They had found 
a traitor in his own company: for thirty 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTS-EASE. 85 

pieces of silver they could buy his crucifixion ! 
But, looking back on it all, who had the best 
of it ? Better to drink the bitter cup with 
him, better to weep with him under the trees 
and to bleed with him on the cross, than to 
share the palace of the high priest and the 
banquet of Pilate. 

We need not cultivate sadness, nor go out 
of our way to hunt for crosses; but we can 
meet our fate and face our trials as we take 
the changes of the weather, not trying to 
count the raindrops, nor minding the gusty 
flaws that blow across t^e road we must 
travel. Some degree of discomfort is an 
incident of the journey: we must count it 
as a part of our necessary expenses, and 
forget it in the same way. 

In Browning's rendering of the old Greek 
play, when Queen Alkestes lies dead, the 
people gather at the palace gate, half-paralyzed 
with gloom, but chattering mournfully, as if 
avery little incident or aspect of the hour 



86 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 

were of awful import. Then the hero Heracles 
appears on the scene, half-man and half-god, 
with his " great, interrupting voice." The 
private grief of King Admetus, as measured 
by his weeping friends, suddenly 

" Shrank to a somewhat pettier obstacle 

I' the way of the world : they saw good days had been, 

And good days, perad venture, still might be." 

"The gay cheer of that great voice" — the 
voice of the hero with "the irresistible, sound, 
wholesome heart" — flows among them like a 
breeze among vapors or like sunlight among 
shadows. His very presence lifts them above 
all clouds, so that they can look down and 
see how small a part of the infinite creation 
the clouds can ever cover. If any of us 
covet to be useful to our companions, what 
contribution can enrich them more than this 
"sweet, infectious health," this inspiration of 
courage and good cheer? 

Perhaps, therefore, the best use I can make 
of this subject is to show what a poor subject 



HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 87 

it is, after all, — what small business it is to 
be feeling of our feelings and watching our 
moods, to see whether we have heart-ache or 
heart's-ease. " Happy, my brother ? w exclaims 
Carlyle. " First of all, what difference is it 
whether thou art happy or not ? To-day 
becomes yesterday so fast: all to-morrows 
become yesterdays; and then there is no 
question whatever of the happiness, but quite 
another question. Kay, thou hast such a 
sacred pity left, at least for thyself, thy very 
pains, once gone over into yesterday, have 
become joys to thee. Besides, thou knowest 
not what heavenly blessedness, what indispens- 
able sanatory virtue is in them. Thou shalt 
only know it after many days, when thou art 
wiser." 

While we sit brooding over our troubles 
and the hardships of our lot, the great world 
goes tranquilly on, the infinite sky hangs over 
us, the everlasting order abides, and "God is 
where he was." Can we not forget or endure 



88 HEART-ACHE AND HEARTHS-EASE. 

our pestering " insect miseries" for a little 
while in the presence of the eternal laws and 
eternal powers ? If we keep our souls in 
patience, if we hold fast to our faith and 
hope and love, the soft streams of healing 
power will flow into us and through us. We 
shall receive and give out the infinite good. 
We shall share and promote the endless 
circulations of benefit. 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 



The moving finger writes; and, having writ, 
Moves on. Nor all your piety and wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. 

— Omar Khayam. 

Every hour conies with some little fagot of God's 
will fastened upon its back. — Faber. 

This hour is mine with its present duty. The 
next is God's ; and when it comes, His presence 
will come with it. — Anon. 

A man makes no noise over a good deed; but 
passes on to another, as a vine to bear grapes again 
in season. — Marcus Aurelius. 

If thou hast yesterday thy duty done, 

And thereby cleared thy footing for to-day, 
Whatever clouds shall dark to-morrow's sun, 
Thou shalt not miss thy solitary way. 

— Goethe. 
(90) 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 



" Teach me your mood, O patient stars! 
Who climb each night the ancient sky, 
Leaving on space no shade, no scars, 
No trace of age, no fear to die." 

— Emerson. 

Let us try to look out on the universe as 
children who watch their father at his work. 
We know something of what has been done; 
we know something of what is now doing. 
Creation is a visible fact; it is almost a 
visible process. We see worlds formed and 
launched into space ; we see suns lighted up 
and systems set in orderly array; we see the 
vast void marked , off into circles — paths 
for shining orbs ; we see everywhere light, 
motion, life. Creation seems to be organized 



92 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

and directed like a mighty orchestra, and the 
infinite harmonies are played with unseen 
fingers, as many fingers as there are masses 
or atoms of matter. How delicate and exact 
is every touch ! how firm and masterful ! So 
perfect is the rhythm of nature's movements, 
so nicely adjusted is the balance of forces, 
that the philosophers have thought of the 
Creator as the supreme Master of Mathematics, 
and have tried to find in numbers the secret 
of His method — a method which makes 
possible infinite variety inside of unbroken 
unity. "God geometrizes," says one; "God's 
true name is Measure," says another. All the 
processes are set to music; all the worlds 
keep time. Creation is a vast clock-work, and 
even to our eyes the sky is a dial-plate. 

" For the world was built in order, 
And the atoms march in tune." 

Thus nature is the registration-office where 
our days are numbered. Dr. Martineau finds 
this distinction between man and the other 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 93 

inhabitants of the world: that he alone can 
tell what o'clock it is. "Other creatures 
travel down the path of time, but he alone 
can count the steps." To man alone is given 
the wit to construct a calendar, to take note 
of the passing seasons, to keep anniversaries, 
to reckon duration by centuries, and to lift 
the awful veil of the future by prophetic 
instincts and hopes. 

In all this the man-child is trying to think 
the Father's thoughts. Nature is our text- 
book of arithmetic. We measure time by the 
rhythmic movements of the earth and moon, 
of the sun and stars. The Hebrew poet of 
Creation sings that "God said, Let there be 
lights in the firmament of the heaven, to 
divide the day from the night; and let them 
be for signs and for seasons, and for days 
and for years." This solemn march of time, 
does it not mark the stately footsteps of that 
Power "whose goings forth have been of old, 
even from everlasting ? " 



94 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

"While like a tide our minutes flow, 
The present and the past, 
He fills His own immortal now, 
And sees our ages waste." 

The part we have in time is appointed by 
the same fateful wisdom which sets each star 
in space. We, too, have our orbits; we, 
too, move amid the boundlessness; we are 
sheltered by the same laws ; we are cared for 
by the same Providence ; we are a part of 
the Cosmos, — the great, beautiful, ordered 
world. 

The word "universe" holds one of the 
sublimest conceptions man has reached. It 
represents our conviction that all the manifold 
realities and phenomena of existence are 
included in one order and are the expression 
of one Mind. This vast variety of things is 
gathered up into complete unity. Of late, the 
spectrum has been bringing us reports from 
distant stars ; and the scientists have learned 
with great delight that those stars are 
composed of the same materials which make 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 95 

our own globe. Professor Dana says that 
"a text-book on crystallography, physics, or 
celestial mechanics, printed in one of our 
printing-offices, would serve for the universe." 

But we feel not half the grandeur and 
wonderfulness Of our being by looking on 
ourselves as inhabitants of a material realm; 
we see not half the majesty and glory of 
creation with our outward eyes. God is not 
occupied in playing with balls, however large 
and shining ; He is busy in an industry worthy 
of His own spiritual nature; He makes and 
manages the physical order as a nursery of 
souls, a training-school for children that may 
call Him their Father. As Swedenborg would 
teach us, all the heavenly societies, all the 
angelic orders, are composed of spirits who 
once lived in bodies like ours, and graduated 
from some of the countless worlds that are 
like our earth. 

If this be true, the days that we number 
here must have a value and a meaning which 



96 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

does not all appear in our bodily experiences. 
They are given us "that we may apply our 
hearts unto wisdom"; that we may learn and 
practise the lessons of that life which outlasts 
the fleeting days. 

In those rare moments when we are most 
responsive to the touch of nature and to the 
voices of the soul, it is easy to realize that we 
are embosomed in an infinite order; that 
we are continually dealt with by the wisdom 
which manages all worlds, raising them from 
night and nothingness, leading them through 
the course of their wonderful destiny, and 
taking us along with them. Are we not 
riding on a star among the stars, and is not 
every year what William Gannett calls "a 
year of miracle"? 

If we recall what we have witnessed and 
have experienced in any twelve months' 
procession, it will grow clear that every day 
is a sample of eternity and that every fact is 
a revelation. For the laws which govern 



NUMBERING OUR DATS. 97 

spirit, like those which govern matter, come 
in everywhere, and always ; they find room 
for their sweep and sway in onr commonest 
concerns. The powers of creation and provi- 
dence, of retribution and redemption, are just 
as young and fresh, just as active and 
complete, in us and in the world around 
us, as they were ten thousand ages ago, 
or as they will be ten thousand ages to 
come. The times in which we are living, 
and which we regard as merely ordinary, are 
what the old Hebrews would reverentially 
call "the years of the right hand of the 
Most High." 

The laws of causation are constant and 
uniform. The waters w T ear the stones; the 
coast-lines slowly shift; the earth's strata tell 
the story of the geologic ages; and perhaps 
each atom bears some modifying trace of 
every vibration or process in which it has 
played a part. The forester counts the years 
of a tree's life by the rings in its woody 



98 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

trunk. But as these annual growths differ 
in thickness, he can tell or guess what years 
were friendly or backward, warm or cold, wet 
or dry, just as by knots in the wood or scars 
in the bark he can tell the output or loss of 
buds and limbs. Thus the tree writes in 
itself the history of its life and the record 
of all passing seasons. 

To an eye that sees all things as they are, 
each man's inner being must contain the 
stored-up results of all his choices and 
conduct, and of all the forces and principles 
that have affected his mind and heart. We 
number our days as the tree its years ; they 
go to the making of us what we are and 
what we are to be. Indeed, what we call our 
character is simply the sum of inward effects 
produced by thought, feeling and volition, — 
a sum which includes the influences we have 
actively or passively accepted from nature, 
from our fellow-creatures, and from the invis- 
ible world which we forever inhabit. 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 99 

Matters do not stand with any of ns as 
they did a year ago. Our life has grown 
richer or poorer, deeper or shallower; we are 
better or worse ; more under the rule of truth 
and right, or less. The voice that calls us 
upward sounds nearer and clearer, or farther 
off and fainter, according as we have heeded 
or neglected its invitations. God is where 
He was. We have changed; we have come 
nearer to Him by the rising quality of our 
life, or we have gone away from Him by 
sinking into lower habits and under the 
dominion of lower principles. 

This means that some days count for more 
than others, because we put more into them 
and get more out of them. No day is bright 
when the mind is dull, no day is dull when 
the mind is bright. And those are great 
days which yield great events. But what 
we call an "event" is always an outcoming 
of what went before. There comes a day 
when the blossoms open, when the ripe fruit 



100 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

falls, when the ship enters port. And, after 
weary climbing, one reaches a terrace or a 
summit, draws deeper breath, surveys the 
wider prospect, and feels rewarded for the 
toil. 

But the great days of life are not the days 
when something happens outside of us. They 
are the days when something happens inside, — 
days of spiritual expansion; days of discovery 
or illumination, when we gain clearer perception 
of high realities, see deeper meanings in life; 
days of moral re-enforcement, when we make 
decisions and are prepared for worthier achieve- 
ment. What a day for the blind, when the 
scales fall and his eyes are opened! A white 
day, — a day of light ! Our greater birthdays 
are the days when we enter into truer life 
and come into possession of that inner good 
which is our proper inheritance as children 
of God. 

The moral question refuses to wait: it 
presses for an immediate and decisive answer. 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 101 

Every turn of life is a crisis, in which the 
Spirit softly says, "This is the way; walk 
ye in it." And at every turn we obey or 
disobey, and bring inward or outward con- 
sequences as sure as seed-time brings harvest. 
Therefore, I count it the best and whitest of 
all days when a man accepts heartily, wholly, 
and in loving choice the higher law of life, — 
the day when he welcomes the sacred yoke 
of duty, and gives the throne of his heart to 
the true King. Some call it coming to Christ 
and being converted. Such phrases are none 
too strong, and they carry divine meaning. 
But never mind the dialect: let us seek the 
thing. And the thing, the great, blessed 
thing, is that every lower motive shall give 
way to the love of good, which, as Channing 
loved to say, is identical with the love of 
God. How else can any soul of man hope 
to stand erect, or feel secure, or find his real 
place, or come into possession of that greatest 
good which is his proper inheritance? 



102 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

In reflecting on what the days have done 
or may do for us, we naturally think about 
life and time. What is life ? No definition 
seems to make it plain; but perhaps we have 
a right to say that life is our share of God. 
While we touch the transient, and leave it, 
we live in the Eternal, and never leave it. 
Our lives are set fast in the larger life, like 
the limbs and leaves of a tree. In the very 
act of contemplating ourselves, we look into 
the infinite ; just as in contemplating a star 
we look into the boundlessness of space. 
Without space, no stars ; without God, no life. 
The more we ponder, the more we wonder. 
The mystery of our own existence forever 
connects itself with that larger Mystery which 
makes our existence possible; and we feel 
with wonder and awe, "how good it is to be 
alive ! " 

And what is time ? It is our present share 
in eternity. Duration, like space, is infinite; 
it has neither beginning nor end. But as the 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 103 

orbit of every star is a circle enclosing some 
tract of the immeasurable space, so our earthly 
life takes in some tract of the immeasurable 
duration. Our limited being can only take 
in a little; and it is therefore fortunate for 
us that time is marked off in periods, as 
space is measured out by boundaries. But 
these littles give us a hint of the large, as a 
drop is a hint of the ocean. 

To us mortals, life and time, within these 
limitations of sense, are conditions of every- 
thing else. Emerson exclaims : " Give me 
health and a day, and I will make the pomp 
of emperors ridiculous." What can we do 
with health and a day ? We can live, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, in infinite space and 
infinite time; we can take in something of 
the universal life and the Godlike forces; we 
can come in touch with nature, humanity and 
the Supreme Spirit. Between every rising 
and setting sun we can gain visions of truth 
and beauty; we can exercise affections of 



104 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

goodness and purity; we can put our powers 
of mind and body under the discipline of 
virtue and usefulness; we can live and learn 
and love; we can do and enjoy and grow. 
Thus, in the very act of finding the world 
around us, we find ourselves, and acquire the 
use of our faculties. We store up the results 
of observation and reflection; we become 
acquainted with reality; we keep step with 
the larger order. We can convert the days 
and years into building material for the 
temple of a noble personality. How precious, 
then, is time; how sacred, then, is life! 

At a funeral, I often find myself asking, 
" What did the man whose body lies here get 
out of his earthly years ? He came into 
this world an infant, with empty hands ; what 
did he carry with him when he left ? He 
has moved about among his fellows; he has 
looked on the earth and sky, and into human 
eyes; thousands of days and nights have 
passed over his head ; he has seen the flowers 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS 105 

conie and the leaves fall; he has felt the 
fever of desire and the chill of disappointment ; 
he has heard words of truth, and soft inward 
calls of reason and conscience. God gave him 
time and opportunity. What did he do with 
time ? "What use did he make of opportunity ? 
What did he get out of life ? " But, for the 
dead, I know not how to answer these 
questions. They all turn into the prayer, "So 
teach us, who still move about among these 
fading phantoms, — so teach us to number our 
days that we may apply our hearts unto 
wisdom ! " 

Let us not shrink from a wholesome self- 
questioning. As the years go by, does life 
acquire deeper meaning and higher value ? 
Do we care more for good things, and most 
for the best ? Are we more ready to take 
a hint of improvement, more open to the 
reproofs of truth, more sensitive to the 
distinctions of right and wrong? Have we 
been growing more reasonable, calm, self- 



106 NUMBERING OUB DAYS. 

possessed; more amenable to discipline, and 
so more skilful in the worthy use of our 
faculties ? Does nature seem more and say 
more to us because our eyes have opened to 
its pictures, our ears to its music, our hearts 
to its wonders ? And this human world in 
which we live and move and have our 
being, — has it schooled us to a better 
understanding of what it is to be just and 
kind, pure and true, helpful and glad? Have 
we grown stronger to resist evil example, and 
yet more tender in our compassion toward 
human frailty and folly ? Have we been 
drawing closer in fellowship to all good 
people, and more willing to do our part in 
all good work? If we can say yes to such 
questions, let us thank God, who has helped 
us so to number our days as to learn from 
them the wisdom of the heavens. 

Every year is full of opportunities. Our 
pleasures and our pains, our victories and 
defeats, our gains and our losses, the flowers 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 107 

that have bloomed along our path and the 
thorns that have torn our flesh, — when we 
have left them all behind, can we not see 
in the review that they were part of our 
spiritual training? 

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not 

breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He lives 

most 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 

By the right use of things seen and 
temporal we shall really rise into communion 
with things unseen and eternal. 

"All common things, each day's events, 
That with the hours begin and end, 
Our pleasures and our discontents, 
Are rounds by which we may ascend." 

In climbing this ladder of life we leave 
the rounds behind, and they are soon forgotten. 
So must it be with the days themselves, and 
with what they bring. One glance backward 



108 NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 

tells this story of merciful forgetfulness. 
How many things now look little which once 
looked large ! Who cares to remember his 
toilsome days or his tossing nights, the pains 
that wrenched his nerves, or the pangs that 
smote his heart? It is much the same with 
the pleasures, achievements, and applauses 
that gratified us most. The events that 
began with the hours ended with the hours; 
and our entire past is rapidly gliding from 
lis to mingle with the vague memories of 
childhood. Does the traveler remember his 
steps ? Does the sailor remember the billows 
he crossed, or the winds that helped or 
hindered? The steps must be taken, the 
voyage must be made; but the incidents by 
the way are forgotten in the destination. 
Welcome the experiences that conduct us to 
wisdom and goodness, to power and peace ! 
Welcome all "the rounds by which we may 
ascend " ! Welcome, too, the oblivion which 
gently closes the past behind us as the future 



NUMBERING OUR DAYS. 109 

opens before us. It may be that in the long- 
days of eternity the whole of this life will 
fade from memory as already its earliest 
years have faded. 

And if we do but move steadily upward, 
the light will increase ; these " common things " 
will shine with heavenly meanings ; higher 
forces will act on us and through us ; new 
faculties and new fountains of feeling will 
open within us, changing our burdens to 
wings; and our light afflictions, which some 
time we shall see were but for a moment, will 
work for us a far more exceeding and eternal 
weight of glory. 



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